Born With a Tooth

  When I got back to the reserve, everyone came out and laughed at me. Someone said I looked like a prophet, and that name stuck.” Sylvina can feel herself smiling. She’d always thought that was his birth name. “Get up now, Sylvina,” he whispers to her. “Get up now before you freeze.” He gently tickles her face with the goose feather again and says, “Hey. Hey.”

  Sylvina opens her eyes, but everything is fuzzy, like a TV left on too late at night. Snow falls in fat flakes, tickling her face. Her eyes focus. A woman’s face is above her. An Indian, silhouetted by a streetlight. “Hey. Hey,” she says. “You better wake up, you. You’re going to freeze there.” Sylvina recognizes her. She’s from a little reserve, Fort Albany, up north of Moose Factory. The woman is drunk.

  Sylvina tries to sit up. The woman helps her. Sylvina shivers violently. “Somebody’s hurt you,” the woman says. “Look at you, Anishnaabe woman. You wait here, you. I’ll get help.”

  The woman is gone a long time. Sylvina looks around but doesn’t recognize where she is. A pickup truck passes farther down the street. Suddenly, Sylvina is more afraid than she has ever been that Drew will come back. She stands up and her head explodes with pain. She tries to walk but trips. Her jeans are around her ankles. It takes forever to pull them up and button them. She sits huddled on the curb, shivering crazily and crying.

  A car pulls up and a bright light shines in her eyes. The pain makes her cry out and throw her hands up. Two policemen get out, hands casual in their coat pockets. “What’s the problem here?” the taller one asks.

  “Looks like this one’s been brawling,” the other says. Sylvina stands up, swaying, light-headed and stunned. “Maybe she got in a fight with that other crazy squaw we just talked to,” the cop continues, pointing and walking towards Sylvina, his hands out of his pockets now.

  “This one’s definitely had a few too many as well,” the taller cop laughs, approaching her from the other side. “Makes ya wish they’d just stay on the reserve.”

  The idea of more rough hands on her makes Sylvina go grey, makes her stomach rock. As the tall one grabs her arm, Sylvina reaches out and strikes at him, slapping his cheek hard with her open palm. “Hey!” the other shouts as he pounces and grabs her, pulling her arms behind her back. The slapped policeman, red-faced and shaking with anger, grabs her by the hair and drags her to the police car. Sylvina’s legs give out and he drags her weight, grunting.

  “Stupid bitch,” he says. “Resisting arrest, assault on an officer, public drunk.” Sylvina throws up from the pain onto the side of the cruiser.

  “Assaulting a police cruiser,” the other cop says, guffawing. “We got a real live one here.” They get her into the back of the car. Her crying almost sounds like a laugh.

  Sylvina remembers flashes of the drive in the car, being taken inside the police station, the place so brightly lit that she throws up again. Shouting. Laughing. Being fingerprinted and asked many questions, none of which she can make sense of. Her head screaming, pounding, her brain trying to break out of her skull. The bright, sick lights. The policeman takes her wallet, her belt, her shoelaces, her beaded eagle hairclip. He puts her in an eight-by-eight cell with a cot and toilet and nothing else.

  “Sleep it off,” he says to her. She wishes she could. Thirsty. So thirsty. She considers drinking out of the toilet like a dog. “I’d like to die,” she says out loud. She considers hanging herself. Sylvina lies down, wondering if she’ll wake up again.

  Minutes? Hours? How long has she slept? The bright fluorescent light of the cell gives nothing away. The police have forgotten about her. The pilot doesn’t care. Her mother doesn’t know where she is. Pounding head. She can feel the swell of bruise on her right temple. Her vagina is on fire. Sylvina’s afraid to touch it, scared of what she will find, some disgusting leftover of Drew. Her shaking sobs hurt. Just a drink of water, a shower, darkness. She can tie one leg of her jeans around her neck and the other somehow to the vent above. Then it would be easy. Stand on the cot. Step off.

  The cell door clanks open. A new policeman holds out a sandwich in wax paper and bottled water. He places them on the edge of Sylvina’s cot. She looks at his eyes for a brief second. The look in them surprises her.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “It seems that the officer doing shift change forgot to mention your presence. Can I get you something?”

  There is so much that Sylvina wants right now. The last day to disappear. To be home. She can’t find words to answer him. She feels sick and ugly under his gaze and turns her head away.

  “My advice is to go along with what is asked of you for the next couple of days, until the court backlog is eased, and not make any waves. Your hearing should be before this weekend but, if not, this is your home for the next little while. Hitting Officer Whitt was not a good idea.” Sylvina listens with her head to the wall. “Volunteering information like your name and address can only help, Sylvina,” he continues. She looks over to him quickly. How does he know her name? Then she remembers they have her wallet. “My name’s Officer Johansson,” the policeman says. “I’ll be in to check on you every hour during my shift.”

  She wants to ask him for something for her headache, but in the time she searches for her voice, he leaves.

  A fitful sleep. She dreams of her girls, of them dancing at the spring powwow in jingle dresses, in moccasins that Sylvina has stitched and elaborately beaded herself. Theresa dances a competition dance. So pretty. Long black braids tied tight and shining. Her dress flashing and tinkling its hundreds of little bells as she spins and taps the balls, then heels, of her feet in the dirt of the circle. Peneshish following her big sister’s lead, spinning and jingling, dancing and clapping and laughing and winning.

  Her coughing wakes her. Her throat feels shredded. Sylvina reaches down and picks up the water, opens it and drinks it all at once. She fights the urge to throw it back up. Her body needs this one thing.

  She sleeps again, and her husband comes to her. His eyes are very sad. “Forgive me,” he says. “I’m sorry.” He holds his hands out to Sylvina. He’s crying. She’s speechless. She’s never seen him cry before.

  The sound of the cell door brings her quickly back to consciousness. Johansson hands her another bottled water. “You should eat something,” he says. “How’d you get that bruise? You have to inform me if you want to see a doctor.” The thought of a stranger’s hands on her makes her feel sick. She shakes her head. Johansson hands her some white pills. “Aspirin,” he says. “Are you allergic?” Sylvina shakes her head again. “I have to watch you swallow them,” he says. She puts the Aspirin in her mouth, followed by water. She opens her mouth to show him they’re gone. He leaves.

  Sylvina knows a new day has come when she’s escorted to the showers, a cavernous, tiled room with faucets sticking out of the walls. A big woman escorts her. Other than this woman, Sylvina is the only person in this place. The sound of the water echoes loudly. She scrubs and scrubs until the woman tells her it’s time to go back to the cell.

  The days pass. Three showers and she thinks she can still smell Drew’s cologne on her. Johansson is the only one who speaks to her. He lets her know what day it is, what the time is, when the court might hold her hearing. “Only a couple more days,” he tells her. “Monday morning, first thing. The Crown will most probably drop the resisting arrest and assaulting an officer in exchange for time served. But he’ll hit you with public intoxication. Pay the fine, you’ll be free to go.”

  Sylvina spends hour after hour sleeping. She doesn’t have to think when she’s dreaming. When she’s awake, she traces her finger along a crack that runs the length of the wall. River ice. Pressure cracks. She pretends she pilots a plane high above the river. She’s a good flier.

  On Monday morning Sylvina is taken to the shower, then given her clothes back, washed overnight and folded neatly. She dresses and goes to see the judge.

  “I’m mad at you, Mommy,” Peneshish says to Sylvina. They’re sitting on the riverbank
looking out to the mainland. The sun is warm for April. In the four months she’s been back home, she’s been re-teaching herself to bead leather and has pricked her fingers enough times that the tips are becoming callused. A drop of blood for each row of beads, she figures. She’s not enjoying the experience. “Mommy, I want you to play with me!” Peneshish says. In the course of this winter, Peneshish’s throat, her vocal cords, have learned freedom. She is constantly surprising Sylvina with new words and expressions. Sometimes, Sylvina can’t keep her quiet. The ancestors must have whispered in Peneshish’s ears over the winter that this would be good punishment for Sylvina.

  Theresa refuses to stay with or even talk to Sylvina. When the girl spotted Sylvina and Peneshish at the Northern Store the other day, she made a scene of turning and walking the other way. She can hold a grudge, for sure. Theresa stays with Sylvina’s mom, for the most part. Her mother won’t talk to Sylvina either. This stubborn line runs in the family, Sylvina thinks.

  “Play,” Peneshish says, stamping her foot and looking at her mother.

  “In a minute,” Sylvina says. “I’ve got to finish your moccasins for the powwow.”

  “Stupid moccasins,” Peneshish says.

  When Sylvina returned to the reserve, her husband had disappeared as well. Four months later now and the afternoons warm enough to sit by the river and he’s still not home. Nobody admits to knowing where he is. Someone must know, Sylvina thinks. There are no secrets among the people of this island. Peneshish has stopped asking where Daddy is every day. Now it might be once a week. Maybe it’s better this way.

  “OK, Mommy. Time to play,” Peneshish says. Sylvina ignores her chattering. For Sylvina to give in is to admit defeat, and both of them know it.

  “Come here,” Sylvina says after a while. Peneshish is busy throwing sticks into the river two at a time, watching them race, talking happily to herself. “Come here, Peneshish,” Sylvina says again gently. Peneshish looks to her, then walks up the bank towards her. “These flowers are for you, for your feet,” Sylvina says, holding out the finished beadwork to her little girl. Peneshish looks at it, then runs a finger over the hundreds of tiny coloured beads stitched onto the moose hide.

  “Ever nice, eh?” Peneshish says.

  Sylvina looks at her own work. “It definitely isn’t Mrs. Metatawabin’s work, but it’s OK, I guess,” she says.

  “What do you mean?” Peneshish asks, her eyebrows arched.

  “Mrs. Metatawabin is the best bead-worker on the reserve,”

  Sylvina explains. “I’m just saying I’m not perfect.” Peneshish looks at her with squinted eyes, looking for words. She turns and walks back to the river. Sylvina isn’t surprised to see her own mother in her daughter’s eyes. Peneshish resumes talking to herself and throwing sticks into the river. Sylvina can’t help but smile at her awkwardness, her strong little arm.

  WEST

  Running

  KUMAMUK

  Buzz on the reserve was that the wrestlers were definitely coming. The chief had worked it that eleven of the monsters would stay and do battle in three events spread over seven days. Every Cree on the James Bay coast was invited and with the ice road melted to thick mud, the only way to the reserve was by air. Air Creebec had already added extra flights. People for three hundred kilometres were coming. Such an event had never been attempted in so remote an area, and the council and promoters stood to make some very good money.

  But money was not what interested young Noah. He’d seen the names on the card. The one and only Chief Thunderbolt, Protector of the Indian Nations, was coming. He was the warrior who’d developed the Strong Bow, and that move was feared by all his opponents. Although Noah had not heard of the other wrestlers, he’d seen Chief Thunderbolt on television before; the children had been allowed to meet in the community hall every other Saturday, if they’d done well in school that week, to gaze at the television and the wrestlers battling on the screen. And now next week, real live wrestlers were going to be in that very same community hall, fighting it out right in front of Noah. Not many events in Noah’s eight years of living had seemed so exciting. He couldn’t wait.

  The day of the match, all of the smaller children were horrified, Noah among them. The wrestlers had brought bright lights and very loud music and an announcer shouting through a microphone. Nearly-naked men paraded into the packed room, hollering and beating chests and slapping hugely muscled arms. For the most part their flesh was ghost-white, but a few were bronzed dark as the Indians who surrounded them, and there was one as black and shiny as a Canada goose’s beak. Everyone had expected them to be larger than normal men, but here in real life they seemed as monstrous as windigos, and their howls and shouts were just as scary.

  The announcer continued rumbling into his microphone. Children clapped their hands over their ears at the booming voice. Noah looked around him at the crowd, at the children retreating from the front rows as the huge men scrambled up into the ring and continued their shouting and slapping. Noah was the only one to move forward. He stood in the third row all alone, transfixed.

  There was a fat monster with a straw hat and overalls; the announcer called him Giant Haystacks. Another had long greasy hair and black makeup covering his eyes and was called the Diesel Machine. Another wore some kind of fancy army uniform, skin tight, with tall black boots. He had a tiny moustache and in his hand he carried a short stiff whip. The announcer called this one Fritz Von Schnitzel.

  The next had a crewcut that was dazzling white. He seemed as if he were made of bronze and his arms and legs were as big as some of the kids watching. His stomach looked to Noah like the rippled wake his father’s motorboat left in the river in summertime. This man the announcer named Beef Wellington. Beef Wellington looked straight at Noah, curved his arms in front of him till all the muscles in his neck and shoulders and chest and arms bulged, and roared. Noah couldn’t help but smile at the attention. He wanted to lift his arm and wave back to Beef Wellington, but he was too shy.

  The next giant wore a scarf made of pink feathers wrapped around his neck and a tight pink bodysuit. His eyelashes were long and black. His cheeks were red. When the announcer introduced him as the Pink Panther, he ran his hand over his long blond hair as if to make it neater than it already was. Then he carefully lifted one hand to wave as he blew kisses with the other. Noah heard some of the grown-ups behind him giggle.

  The announcer’s voice boomed out again, “One of the natural wonders of our modern world, the Orderlies!” Two men, identical, jumped up onto the ropes at the same time. Everything about them was exactly the same — their blue doctor pants, the doctor masks hanging around their necks — and each had the same tattoo of a naked woman on his left bicep. Then came the black man. His skin glistened with oil; his muscles flexed, detailed and massive; his bald head had a single vein standing out on the front of it. The announcer called this one De Stubborn Headache. Noah had never seen a live black man before, and remained as silent as the rest of the crowd in the gym.

  Next to take centre ring was a mountain of flesh. He too was bald but, in contrast to the other bald one, he was white as the underbelly of a fish. Two small eyes peered out from his huge head. Noah wondered how this one could move in the suit of fat that covered him. The announcer simply called him Bulba. But it was the last two that most caught Noah’s attention. The first one, Kid Wikked, wore a sequined mask and a white cowboy hat, white boots and white bikini bottoms. And then there was the other. Noah’s idol, brown as the crowd, wearing a loincloth and tall moccasins. On his head was a war bonnet, the eagle feathers reaching down his back to his knees. On his cheeks were colourful lines of war paint. When the announcer shouted the name Chief Thunderbolt, the wrestler let out a war cry that shot straight to Noah, straight into his heart. Suddenly, Noah saw his whole fantastic life sprawl out in front of him. It was at that moment that he knew exactly where his life would take him.

  Before the children and adults in the gym had a chance to recove
r from this onslaught of muscle and tight shorts and makeup, most of the men jumped from the ring and retreated, whooping, to their dressing rooms in back, leaving two warriors, Fritz Von Schnitzel and the Pink Panther, with the announcer between them.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer boomed, stretching each word to breaking point, “our first match of the afternoon is a grudge match extraordinaire.” Each of the men stood restlessly in his own corner, shaking out his arms and legs. “It’s not a secret,” the announcer continued, “that there’s no love lost between these two men. In fact, Fritz Von Schnitzel claims there’s no room in the wrestling world for, as he puts it, such an abomination as the Pink Panther.” At the mention of his name, Von Schnitzel clicked his boot heels together and looked down his nose at the audience. “Von Schnitzel comes in weighing a respectable 238 pounds. The Pink Panther, 252.”

  The Pink Panther turned and waved daintily to the crowd, flipping his scarf of feathers behind him. Von Schnitzel strode quickly across the ring and pounced on the Panther’s back, driving his elbow into the pink man’s shoulder. The two fell to the mat with an echoing boom. Noah gasped. Von Schnitzel knelt across the Pink Panther’s body with his knee. Each time he landed, the ring shook and a mighty bam! erupted. Noah didn’t know how the poor Panther was able to take such a savage beating. He looked behind him at the children covering their ears and eyes. Some of the teenage boys smiled, and John Goodwin even shouted out, but other than that, the audience was silent and staring, as if they weren’t sure they should be witnessing this.

  Fritz linked his own arms under the arms and over the neck of the Pink Panther in a full nelson and arched the Panther’s back up in an unnatural bend. Noah recognized this from TV as the dreaded Nazi Clutch. The Pink Panther’s face twisted in pain. His makeup was a mess from the sweat, or maybe tears, Noah couldn’t tell. The ref knelt and watched the battle carefully from up close. Von Schnitzel released the Panther, rolled him onto his back and lay across his chest. The ref, down on his stomach now, pounded with his palm on the mat, “One ... two ...,” and then the Pink Panther roared to life, arching his back like a salmon leaping rapids, throwing Von Schnitzel from him. The Panther was up now, driving his pink boot down with echoing thumps onto Von Schnitzel’s chest. After what seemed to Noah an unbelievably long torture session, the Panther dropped to his knees, straddled Von Schnitzel, held his shoulders down on the mat and listened as the ref counted. When he shouted, “Three!” the Pink Panther leaned down and kissed the knocked-out Fritz on the cheek. Noah heard the crowd gasp. The Pink Panther pranced around the stage as Von Schnitzel groggily pulled himself up and retreated to the dressing room.